Separation anxiety: Injured Blue Jays can feel lost when injuries tear them away

Injured Blue Jays can feel lost when injuries tear them away

TORONTO — In nine seasons and 517 games as a major-league pitcher, Jason Frasor had never landed on the disabled list. It was a point of pride. So back in May, when the pain started — on the inside of his forearm, about two inches below the elbow — he did what he always did. He pitched.

Pitchers often persevere through soreness, discomfort or even pain. Frasor, a Toronto Blue Jays reliever whose fastball typically travels 94 miles an hour, had done it before and assumed he would do it again. There would be no stint on the disabled list for him, even though at times, he says, the pain “was killing me.”

“There was a stubbornness to this whole thing,” he admits now. “Looking back, and with the way my arm feels now, I probably should’ve said something and gone on the DL a little sooner.”

How much sooner?

“Months sooner. But I was very proud of the fact that I’d never been on the disabled list. And there was always a part of me that was feeling, ‘I can get through this.’

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From sometime in May until July 21, the pain was his secret. Then, after a rough outing in New York and an off-day in Boston, Frasor decided he had to tell someone. Bullpen coach Pete Walker told him he had to tell someone else. That day, Frasor went on the disabled list and was shipped off to rehab at the Blue Jays’ minor-league complex in Dunedin, Fla.

No Blue Jay wants to visit Dunedin in the summer.

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“It sucks,” says catcher J.P. Arencibia, whose rehab period overlapped Frasor’s in Dunedin. “Imagine if you’re used to something every day for your entire life and then you go from doing something to not doing anything, sitting there and watching the team that you play for on TV. You feel like you don’t know what to do. I’d never been in that situation. I’d say ‘lost’ is a good word.”

Seventeen Blue Jays have felt that sense of loss this season. Some, such as Frasor and Arencibia, have returned. Others — Jose Bautista, Kyle Drabek — are done for the season. Still others — Dustin McGowan, Jesse Litsch — never got to play at all.

For a big-league player, spending time on the disabled list can trigger a form of separation anxiety. They are paid enormous sums to work in a unique macho culture, playing more games than required in any other sport, following a rigid work regimen every day. They love it and know that at any moment, they could lose it.

They come to work early in the afternoon and sometimes do not leave until midnight. They work hard, but hard work does not devour their days. There is plenty of down time between the weight room and the batting-cage sessions, the daily throwing routines and the work in the bullpen, the video study and other game preparation leading up to batting practice.

During the down time, players play cards, lose themselves in wireless gadgets, read fan mail, enjoy conversations and each other’s company. It is a young men’s club. The social dimension is vital to their sense of well-being in a job where one’s worth is measured by a barrage of numbers and constant media scrutiny.

The disabled list disconnects a player from his support system. Down in Dunedin for rehab, “you’re kind of out of sight, out of mind,” says Toronto closer Casey Janssen.

Adds Frasor: “You just miss it, you know? You miss the guys, coming to the field every day, travelling with the team, going to hotels.”

Janssen missed all of 2008 after shoulder surgery and endured three other DL stints during his career. He says a player can feel an odd sense of rejection and failure when injury forces him off the team.

“You’re kind of on a boat, and everyone gets an oar and you just keep paddling,” he says. “And the day you get hurt, you get thrown off the boat. Someone replaces you and everyone keeps paddling.”

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Serving time in Dunedin’s steamy summer gives a player a lot of time to think, and yes, occasionally feel sorry for himself.

“Normally during the season, you’re at the field from one o’clock ’til 11 o’clock at night,” Arencibia says. “Now you’re up in the morning, you do your rehab stuff, you’re done at 11 and you’ve got nothing to do. And all the guys that you hang out with, they’re playing. You’re kind of by yourself pretty much. You kind of sit there and rattle your brain.”

Because professional athletes are such creatures of habit, and so accustomed to having their days planned for them, they often find it difficult to find things to do on rehab. Most of all, they miss the big-league life.

“You want to be with your teammates to help them try to win, and to continue your development,” Janssen says. “People say we spend more time with these guys than we do our own families and it’s so true.

“When you’re away from your guys and away from your family, now what? The fan doesn’t see that. Players who’ve never been hurt don’t even see that.”

For Frasor, the worst part of rehab was that he felt like the baseball season was over. But then he would turn on the TV and see guys he knew playing baseball.

Before reaching the majors in 2004, Frasor underwent reconstructive elbow surgery twice. He finally gave in to the pain in July because he feared he was headed for a third date with the surgeon.

“I felt like I was one pitch away, one outing away from hitting that ligament again,” he says.

But even now, seemingly whole again after his stint in Dunedin, he sustains a peculiar ambivalence about giving in. In the baseball culture, that can be seen as a sign of weakness.

“I don’t regret trying to get through it,” he says. “Over the last nine years I’ve seen guys go on the DL, and I’m like, ‘Come on, you’re on the DL?’ I didn’t want to be like that. But this was legitimate, there’s no doubt about it.”